


Memories of Jayce

by Scottie



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Memories, Memories of Jayce Series, Multi, non-canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:20:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scottie/pseuds/Scottie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the author's take on Jayce's character, primarily focusing on memories of events that happen throughout his life. Parts are not in chronological order and will jump around quite frequently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. And We Go On

Sheryl’s fingernails were uneven and chewed upon too much. They were white with a slight yellowness beneath being the only quiet hue. She smiled nervously as she always did, body shifting as if she was uncomfortable in her own skin. Her eyes were surrounded by black circles and below were heavy bags that sagged and added to her tragic beauty. Brittle, chocolate locks curled around to frame her long, sharp face seemingly almost weighing more than she did. 

Jayce had always thought her pretty. He loved her deep brown eyes. He thought her a pretty monster and he loved her even though she hated him. She was dressed in a pretty blue dress, white flowers blossoming from the hem. From her thin, long neck hung a golden heart-shaped locket bright and glinting in the evening light that streamed through the windows.

There was a light weight on Jayce’s shoulder. He thought of the pressure of fingers on his neck, felt it graze the skin and stay there like a collar, a brand to show him that he wasn’t his own. He didn’t understand, couldn’t think.

Sheryl smiled at him, her lips draw sharp like a beak and lines forming at the corners of her eyes. She looked worried, too nervous to possibly function but Jayce had always known that as his mother. She was always a ball of nerves, too high strung and jumpy to even be considered normal yet Jayce never saw it that way. Except now, with her pale, long slender hand reaching out to him he could not stop from flinching. It drew back quickly, as if he had burnt it and he watched her with wide blue eyes.

He remembered how much she’d tell him that she loved his eyes. She only ever loved the parts of him that reminded her of his father. Everything else except for his eyes she hated because they were too much like her, too much of the person she hated most of all.

“Jayce,” she said wearily. Her expression was strange, as if she was trying to lie to him with that broken smile of her’s. The weight on his shoulder was warm but steady, the hand of his grandmother. Jayce did not speak.

She tried smiling again but it fell quickly from her lips and she breathed a shaky breath then tried again, visage desperate to have him understand what he never did and never would. “You’re going to be staying here with grandpa and grandma,” she said slowly, head bowed forward slightly. Sheryl avoided looking at her parents but that didn’t stop the soft, pleading sound of her name falling from Jayce’s grandmother. His grandfather was like a hulking presence behind him and his voice was low and rumbly.

“Matilda..” he murmured in a quiet warning. Sheryl smiled again and Jayce felt like she was lying but he couldn’t see it anymore. He didn’t want to see it.

“I’m going to be leaving, Jayce. Do you understand?”

He didn’t reply.

“Good; you’re such a good boy, Jayce. You’ll be good for your grandma and grandpa right? They’ll keep you safe.”

Jayce met her hazy eyes. “Where are you going?” he asked quietly.

She tittered from side to side nervously and clasped her hands together, fingers restless and moving. They were always fluttering around her like birds, fair and abrupt.

“I’m going to pick up your father, my dove. He’ll be so happy to see you. We’ll be all together again. So for now you’re staying with granny and grandpa.” A strand of hair fell into her face and it hid her left eye. Jayce felt cold and opened his mouth to speak. “But-”

Her expression grew cold and bitter, contorting and twisting like the trunk of a tree. Jayce’s breath caught in his throat. It was gone quickly when she caught the look his grandfather gave her. She was shaking her head, smiling desperately at them all then completely to Jayce. “Be a good boy.”

She turned his back to him, her dress wrapping around her and swaying back. She pushed open the door and looked back at Jayce. “I have to go meet him now. He’ll be cross if I’m late. I’ll see you soon.”

He watched her disappear through the door and he understood then that she was never coming back. He wanted so much to follow her, to grab at her dress and press his face to her thigh. To just be with her and ask her why she couldn’t just love him. He wanted to scream and thrash around wildly, but that hand on his shoulder was soft, almost trembling and he turned to press it to his face.

His mother was gone.

She was never coming back.

The memories she left were like a deep, deep gash in his being and it was bleeding and weaving into a tattered shawl that wrapped around him in a lame attempt to shelter him from abandonment and the gentle indifference of the world around them because everything went on as always even if something was missing.

Even if things weren’t right; everything went on.


	2. Mommy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was one of those rare days.

It was one of those rare days both grandpa and grandma were out. Jayce had just been outside just moments ago, his shoes digging in the dirt of the backyard as he hid from the sounds of children echoing across the street. The house was dark, growing dimmer as evening sunk into the bones of day and draped across the world lazily.

Suddenly the familiar walls and doorways became foreign and shadows stretched out their heinous claws to caress him. A nervous feeling in his stomach grew and he walked slowly through the dimness, small slender hand pressed lightly to the wall as if trying hard not to get lost in the labyrinth of his own home that seemed even bigger now than it ever had been in the past. 

He knew his mother was home though. She always was. There wasn’t a day when she wasn’t caging herself in her dark attic room surrounded by the suffocating darkness of her depression. 

Jayce didn’t understand. She was untouchable, unapproachable, but she was his mother and what else could he do but go to her in his own fright. The stairs creaked beneath him but what scared him most was reaching the higher steps and finding the attic door partially pushed open. 

He stood outside for a minute, realizing he was actually afraid to go in. He was even more afraid to see his mother with her creased face and her hard hands. He was afraid.

“Mommy?” Jayce called in the only way a child could. Light and innocent, filled with a kind cruelness that could not be matched by any other age. He noticed the long strands of light peering from the darkness like a misty memory. Jayce stepped forward, rocket patterned socks giving him enough courage to step past the threshold. 

And she was there. 

Beauty stacked upon tragic beauty. Her long brown hair was messy, unwashed and beautiful in the evening light. He saw her beside a shadowy canvas. The smell of paints reached his nose and he saw the stacks of canvases pushed messily to each other all along the sides of the room.

His heart seized up when he saw her painting. It was too dark to see the colors well but he could see the obscure figure of a man smudged along the canvas. She stalled though, body curling to the side a bit as if cradling the outline of the canvas like something precious. 

Her hair fell to the side of her shoulders then down the straight of her back to her waist. Jayce took a step. No reaction. Then another until he was beside her, his hands in tight fists pressed against his brown shorts. He didn’t speak. It felt wrong to.

He felt wrong.

As if his whole existence was something that should be ignored and in his tiny little heart Jayce began to blame himself for his mother’s silence, for the long, tired looks on his grandparent’s faces, and the way he was kept away from everyone. 

It didn’t feel right and though the air was hot and the window closed Jayce felt cold. He ached. The fine bright spots of tears in his eyes glistened warmly in the fading light of day and Jayce rubbed at them tiredly. His mother dropped her brush and Jayce went to pick it up and hand it to her. A small swipe of Prussian blue decorated the wood there and Jayce grabbed the small rag beside the foot of the easel. 

His mother watched him quietly, brush hanging loosely from her hand. Jayce rubbed at the stain and it came off quickly with only the faint darkness of the color there before darkening the wood. He looked up to see her and something in her eyes flickered with confusion. 

“Mo- Sheryl,” he corrected himself. He knew she hated it when he called her that. “Are you tired? You should rest. Here, let me get your clothes.” She watched Jayce silently as he wandered around her room and looked in her drawers. He found her night gown and laid it out on the bed. “Can you get dressed?” he asked. 

She nodded and Jayce pressed his hands nervously to his sides. She walked toward him, head bowing lightly to look at the gown then to Jayce once more. Her brown eyes were dark and intense. With thin, dry lips she looked at him almost pleadingly. 

“Where’s Rowan?” she asked. Jayce swallowed. He had only heard that name a handful of times. Every time it was even more unfamiliar than the last. The precious name of a man who had left them. The name of a man who he would have called father. 

“Uh- I don’t know. I-I’ll find him for you though so go ahead and rest, Sheryl,” Jayce lied quickly. He hated lying but he couldn’t find it within himself to be honest. It was breaking him.

His mother sat on the bed and didn’t speak, watching Jayce with half-lidded eyes that were hazily curious. “Ok,” she said quietly and Jayce drew himself closer to her and leaned up to kiss her cheek. “Good night,” he murmured sadly. 

It was something strange and heartbreaking; the care a child could take with an adult. 


	3. Old Jim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer will always taste like bourbon soaked cherries.

It was a hot summer evening like many that Jayce could never keep track of. The evenings were always the best in summer. It gave the city a sleepy look that only golden sunlight gleaming off the sides of buildings and pipes could attain. A soft dream with the harsh reality of shadows bouncing off the pavement like children playing jump rope.

It was the first summer that he was without Joanna and her loud, hearty laughter that rang and rang and rang. It was the type of laugh that you could lose yourself in and she was someone that could make you forget that you were you. She was someone he could give himself to but didn’t have to because she didn’t want it. She wanted only the wind beside her and papers to clutch in her hands as if she were going to write stories on them by just the tip of her fingernails.

He remembered how’d she would rap at Jayce’s head, brushing aside his messy hair and grinning. She told him she wrote stories in her head but Jayce was always better at writing them out than she was. They never talked about it but she always kept several copies of all his novels in that endless bookshelf that was filled with all her favorite history books and obscure titles. She always did like odd things.

And now he was thirsty. His tongue was dry, pressing tightly against the back of his teeth and brushing against the roof of his mouth. There was a small convenience store several blocks down that he always went to with Joanna. They bought the fizzy sodas in vintage glass bottles of an odd shape that had small clear balls in the neck.

The name was vaguely Ionian and neither of them had figured out how to pronounce the name and it had become a sort of thing with them. It held some sort of magic to it by not knowing the right name. Some sort of mystery that excited them when they were kids. Jayce always had liked the lime flavor. Joanna adored melon, but they could both agree that orange was quite delicious.

Jayce bought himself one and he watched the shapes of people morph and twist in the curved reflection of the glass as he waited for the cashier to return him his change. He popped the cap off and threw it into the trashcan outside. The glass was cool beneath his callous fingers as he drank shallowly.

He liked to walk around during this time. You get to see the darkness that really hides and the good that weaves itself into it as if it were one and the same thing. Jayce licked at the mouth of the bottle and found himself a nice spot on a wall that long time smokers used on their breaks.

He watched people. He liked to do that. It gave him both inspiration and a sense of nomadic restlessness that didn’t have a place in him but always seemed to wander across his path on days that he was too alone.

There was a bell, bright and clear beside him; the door of a shop opening to give way to the wheelchair of an elder black man with a mean look. He coughed once then twice, hands pushing down on the wheels. He squared his jaw and pushed himself to a spot beside the door. Jayce could see the darker spots on the ground where the wheels had rested many times before.

The elder man searched his pockets and pulled out a new pack of cigarettes. They were a brand his grandfather used to smoke. He tapped on the bottom a few times then tore open the package, dark gnarled fingers curling around one then shoving the rest of the pack back into his pocket. A lighter appeared in his hand when he pulled it back out and he lit his cigarette in a tired fashion.

He sighed, the lit end of the cigarette like cinders in a dying fire. Then he coughed again and scratched at the white whiskers on his chin. He noticed Jayce watching.

“What?” he rasped roughly, black eyes narrowed and face creasing. The bottle in Jayce’s hand felt wet with perspiration and he shrugged. “Nothing,” he replied honestly. The elder man scowled and he waved his hand, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

“Then what are you looking at, huh? You were gonna tell me to stop right? Give me a lecture on how unhealthy smoking is or whatever you people say.” Jayce’s brows rose in amusement. “No,” he said, “you can damn do what you like, sir.”

The old man paused then laughed in surprise and merriment, watching Jayce with a shrewd and appraising gaze. A dirty olive green blanket was wrapped around his scrawny legs and he sat in his wheel chair like a king upon a throne.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

Jayce looked clearly at him and without hesitation said, “I have no right to tell you what is right or wrong or what to do or not.” He held his bottle loosely and continued, “Besides, you wouldn’t stop even if I said to.” The old man laughed again and it was a harsh sound that almost made Jayce cringe. His dark skin shone in the fading light and his sunken eyes sparkled with a cynical joy.

“Damn right,” he agreed. Jayce set his bottle on the ground and said, “I used to smoke a lot.” The old man leered at him curiously. “Ya stop?” Jayce nodded and turned his eyes to the heads of the tall buildings, watching the sun outline them in gold. “Why? Girlfriend tell you to?”

Jayce snickered. “Something like that.” The old man scoffed in disdain. Jayce smiled. “But it wasn’t for her. Or for anyone else.” The thick sweetness of smoke tickled Jayce’s nose and he pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth again.

“It was for myself. People shouldn’t say they quit this or that because it’s for their family, it’s for their kids. That’s making excuses. They should do it because they want to and it's what they believe in. After all it’s their decision.” Jayce caught him watching and he watched back. “They should decide what will make them happier. It might not make other people happy, but it’s your decision and no outside influence should affect it.” Jayce picked up the bottle, emptied it of the last couple of sips then tossed it into the trash.

“You’ve got to make a choice and no matter what you choose there’s going to be consequences.”

The old man drew in a long breath, the end of the cigarette glowing a deep red. “Ah,” he said, smoke slipping past his lips and into the air. He smiled and his harsh features made it look more like a sly thing.

“You’re more different than I thought you’d be, Mr. Hero,” he said pleasantly. Jayce was startled and the old man cackled cheerfully. “Oh, you don’t think I don’t know who you are do you? You’re all over the city, boy.” He motioned around them and Jayce saw his back facing the city and eyes on the horizon on. The iconic Defender of Tomorrow image was painted on a new billboard. He had almost forgotten his new identity and suddenly felt lost for a moment.

The old man continued. “I thought you’d be as straight as an arrow. All about being good and hopeful, but nope. You’re something else. You’re bad.” Jayce was puzzled. “Sorry?” he inquired.

Yellow teeth peeked out from his jeering grin and with sadistic zest the old man said, “You’re not forgiven. In fact, you’ve got yourself a new fan. If you don’t watch it people will force you into doing what they think you should do or into being stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.”

Jayce listened silently, head raised and eyes watching the cigarette sway side to side in his mouth. He went on talking and Jayce could see in his glinting eyes that he thought Jayce to be a funny but normal man. He told Jayce to come back tomorrow and that's what he did and the tomorrows after that.

When they met again the old man finally introduced himself as Old Jim and told Jayce as if reminding him of a errand that he was a hundred and one. Jayce didn’t believe him but he never said it. The days that past would start out the same.

Old Jim would roll his wheelchair out to his favorite spot and offer Jayce a cigarette to which Jayce would always politely refuse and be dutifully reminded by Old Jim that he was a hundred and one and smoking really didn’t hurt anyone. Jayce would almost snicker and Old Jim would talk.

He’d say with such a pleased grin, "Don’t lose your laugh, boy. If you lose your laugh, you lose your footing. You gotta laugh at things that hurt ya. It’s the only way of keepin’ your sanity in this world.”

Sometimes they would speak about Runeterra, about the city states and the wars waged. Old Jim always had something to say about it. He’d tell Jayce with his cigarette in hand, “Demacia are folk that do things they think is good to be good. Think of it like the pursuit of happiness, kiddo. Do you do good things of the goodness of your heart or do you do good things because you want to feel good?”

Jayce would sip on his soda and say, “Neither is wrong.” Old Jim would laugh heartily and wink at him. “You’re right about that. But, it’s more like they earnestly lie to themselves without trying to think for themselves.” Jayce would toss his soda into the trash can again and he’d ask something random.

Old Jim would smile in a way that often made Jayce think he always had an answer for everything and he never had the chance to prove that wrong because Old Jim would always have an answer. His teeth were stained yellow and for a week or two he had found his smile to be a little off putting but after a while he had grown accustomed to his leering look and brash, unapologetic way he spoke.

He was a cynical bastard and Jayce was alright with that.

Some days were very hot and Jayce would feel the sweat soak the back of his t-shirt and feel it glisten on his forehead. Days like those Old Jim would invite him into his shop. It was a small, dingy place that sold old candies that Jayce hadn’t seen since he was a kid. There were many that he had never seen either and many that came from places he hadn’t even heard of. It wasn’t just candies, there were old toys that kids could get from kiddie meals at a fast food restaurants.

An old, loud fan would be whirring in the back and Jayce relished the feeling of the cool air hitting the side of his neck. Then seemingly from no where Old Jim would produce a large canning jar filled to the brim with cherries soaked in bourbon.

He’d offer Jayce some and they’d eat several dozens of them as if they had been famished all their lives. No matter how many they ate though it never seemed to dent the contents even a tiny bit.  

Jayce loved the fiery taste and the delicious sweetness that tingled on the tip of his tongue and filled his senses. He’d ask where Old Jim had gotten them but he’d only wink, face creasing and wrinkles filling out places that caught the dust of evening on his dark skin.

Some days he was quieter as if waiting in the calm before the storm. His dark eyes would watch the sun set behind the buildings and they wouldn’t speak. Jayce was afraid of those days. It reminded him of what Old Jim had said before in their earlier meetings.

It was a day that they had first shared the drunken cherries. Jayce had felt a quiet, unsettling feeling dance with the lightness of alcohol in his stomach as Old Jim spoke.

“Piltover won’t be here forever. Zaun won’t be here forever. They’re not as great as Demacia and Noxus so they won’t die out as quickly but they will. All great civilizations always do. Wars are good, but nothing comes from winning them. Winning always brings about more problems. It makes you dumb.”

Jayce liked to think he understood him most of the time; sometimes his words would escape Jayce but they would always be present in his mind like a great puzzle that only a man of a hundred and one could understand.

“I rather go out quick and hard,” Jayce had said. He had motioned to that same bill board Old Jim had first pointed out to him the day they met. “That’s not me up there. That’s not my face. It’s not me. I wasn’t me when I was trying to be that; I just became the person everyone wanted me to be.” Old Jim looked at the bill board.

“Why?”

“Because if you want to hear you have to pretend to be deaf.”

And for a moment Old Jim looked as if he had been hit by a new concept then understood it all as Jayce plucked another cherry from the jar.

He was always there and then he wasn’t.

Jayce hadn’t eaten lunch when he came that day. He had dog fur on his pants and some old stain on the back of his shirt. It was one of those hot, hot days where anything you did would irritate the body. Old Jim didn’t come out of the store and so Jayce let himself into the shop.

He was greeted with bored green eyes and the face of a dark skinned youth with messy long black hair. Jayce paused and the youth spoke before him in a offhanded voice. “Jayce?” Jayce nodded. “Yeah.”

The youth dug under the counter and Jayce watched. His long limbs seemed uncomfortable as if he was just getting used to using them. He handed Jayce a piece of paper and said casually, “The old man’s dead. He left this for you. This shop’s gonna close and his family’s gonna skip town with the money.”

Jayce stared lamely at the piece then grabbed it carefully with sweaty hands. He felt coolness at the side of his neck and glanced at the fan spinning in the back then read. The paper was slightly yellowed and Jayce felt dryness in his mouth. In dark ink Old Jim’s recipe on how to make drunken cherries wavered on the paper and he turned his eyes toward the youth.

“Where’s the body?” he asked.

The boy stared at him then spoke. “At a morgue not far from here.” Jayce folded the piece of paper into his pocket then placed his large hand on the counter, leering over the boy who shifted uncomfortably in his spot.

“Give me the address- no, tell whoever is arranging the funeral that I’m paying for it,” Jayce said heatedly. The boy shrugged and Jayce felt irritation prick the back of his neck then dissipate when he spoke again and began to write down the address on a scrap of paper.

“No one was going to. So that’s no problem.”


	4. Joanna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was his savior.

He could hear the train from here. All smoke and whistles as it rattled the bars of his mind’s cell. Through them was shone light. Blinding and cold against his skin. Wind was his only comfort here looking through that open classroom window at the children on the playground. He could find nothing there that he desired.

The feeling of abandonment curled in his gut then slowly, inevitably moved on. No matter how much he wanted to keep that feeling pressed closely to his breast he knew it would be whisked away in the wind and he’d forgive all the wrongs that have been made against him.

It would pass. 

The was the way he grieved. In little moments of sadness that he drank deeply from in the way only a child could with an honesty that would put priests to shame. Jayce spread his hands across the wood of the sill. He felt the smoothness and the tender mahogany, all things he loved and knew to remind him of his grandfather. Something that was safe.

Out there though, Jayce had thought, peering silently like a owl at the children with sunset cheeks and beating hearts, was not safe. Out there he would have to rehearse handshakes with goblins and trolls and pretend that their claws weren’t digging into him, that he wasn’t so raw and hurting within.

And he had thought it was his imagination. The quiet breeze and the phantom touch at the back of his neck but once he turned to face the bell-like voice that ran perfect circles in his pink ears he realized it wasn’t and he was gazing straight into eyes of rich cocoa. Her lip was twisted into a frown but when she saw his eyes and face that frown was like a lie and she smiled as if she hadn’t known how to do anything else with her thin, pretty lips.

Her cheeks were smeared with dirt and her long, curling brown hair cradling her round and sweet face. She laughed and her hands were like sun kissed birds fluttering in the air as they swayed with her body. Jayce had felt what many would call the beginnings of a crush build a nest around his tiny heart and he was suddenly ashamed and then he was not when she likened his eyes to the pretty sky.

The simplicity of the comparison struck Jayce deeply. There wasn’t a day he didn’t look in the mirror and spewed forth black hate for the eyes he was given by the phantom shadow that had stolen his mother. There was never a moment until now when he would have thought it could ever be associated with anything but ugliness.

She smiled at him and he was madly in love for a moment and a second. Then she pinched his cheek and shoved a foot against his backside with a sharp, barking laugh that bounced off the walls. She proclaimed that she was his savior and Jayce believed it wholeheartedly.


	5. Summers Ago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He had wanted to be a pilot.

The summers of his younger years before his grandfather’s death, before his grandmother’s memory loss, and before everything were like bourbon drowned cherries of the most delicate candy red. The type of cherries you’d have on top of fudge sundae, the type that begged to be eaten last from your favorite milkshake. Those summers were filled with a warmth tenderly laced with nostalgia and soaked in August waters.

Their sagging sneakers soaked with mud would trail across the kitchen floor and they’d hurriedly try to clean it with fluffy towels and thumping hearts before Jayce’s grandmother would return home from shopping. Instead they always made the mess worse, but it didn’t matter. It never mattered no matter how cross his grandmother would be at him and Joanna because it never lasted long and they always learned their lesson yet still made the same dumb mistakes because they were allowed to. They were free of burdens and worries that would someday drape its heavy hands on their shoulders and force them to press arm to arm in an effort to keep themselves up at the end of an exhausting day. 

He had wanted to be a pilot.

Since the first Festival of Flight he had been inspired. He remembered that day with a vividness that over shone most of his memories. It was a hot, breezy day. The air smelled like baked cakes and tasted like Piltover. He had on yellow sneakers, the laces worn and browning. They were his favorite and had a red star on the ankles surrounded by a red ring. He could never tie them properly and so pulled the laces tight then tuck them in against the insides of his shoe. They pressed snugly against his loose white socks.

He had ran over to Joanna’s house, his pulse fast and his heart beating against his chest. His glasses bobbed up and down the bridge of his freckled nose, too big for him and yet he refused to exchange them for a better fit. Jayce had called to her, hands on the tips of the white gate and feet stuck between the open spaces. He leaned forward, blue eyes big and full of excitement.

“Jo!” he hollered.

“JO-”

“I’m coming, loser!” He saw her head pushed out of the windowsill, hands on the edge and long, brown hair a nest that obscured her face and then she was gone behind maroon curtains that swayed in the breeze. Jayce grinned, hopping back from the gate and swinging his feet against the gravel with a soft crunch.

The screen door smacked loudly and Jayce looked up. He saw the big grin and the brown eyes full of light and a teasing look as she rushed to the bed of carnations in her blue flipflops and hopped the fence. Her father always chided her for that and told her to use the gate instead but she never listened. At least when it concerned that.  

“Hey, nerd,” Joanna greeted, slinging a small bag over her small shoulder, wild hair pushed up in a messy ponytail. She pushed up her glasses with a marker stained hand and grinned. He grinned back and pointed to the bag. “What’s in there, boss?” he asked. She laughed and walked past him, bumping shoulders. “You’ll see. C'mon, we gotta get to the best spot if we wanna watch the ships!”

“Zeppelins,” he corrected and she snorted in response, shifting the bag again. “Yeah, yeah. C'mon, I’ll race ya,” she challenged and winked back at him. He rolled his eyes. “I don’t even know where we’re going. You’ll win obviously.” Joanna cackled. “That’s the point!”

They were no strangers to the crowded streets, but they were to the colorful banners that decorated the shops and buildings like a maze. Confetti fell from the sky now and then and stuck to their clothes and hair. They didn’t care much as they darted in and out between arms and legs, laughing all the while and pointing out anything interesting.

They got sidetracked, at times pressing their faces against the glass displays for desserts and toys. By the time they got to where Joanna had initially planned to go they were panting and tired, sitting on white washed steps. Jayce motioned to the sky with a hand, smiling.

“It’s pretty.”

Joanna looked up and snickered. “Jayce, you’re such a girl." Jayce whined, “I’m noooot!” Joanna rolled her eyes and pointed up the steps. "C'mon,” she urged and crawled up the first couple steps before pulling herself up onto her feet to climb the rest. 

At the top was a cobblestone balcony and it blinded his eyes to look out as the sun shone brightly against it. He shielded his eyes and followed the wavering form of Joanna. He saw the sway of the bag over her shoulder and the way her hair bounced against her head. Then he saw the bench beneath the large, stretching tree that sat beside it and hung over like a canopy. It’s branches spread like arms and protected them from the bright sun overhead. A strong, cool breeze ruffled Jayce’s hair and tickled his cheeks.

At the railing several feet in front of the bench lie the most gorgeous sight he had ever seen. Piltover in all her glory. The blue, glistening canals and the silver train speeding by like a silent dragon. He saw the tall buildings likes like blinding pillars of light. Trees peeked out between buildings and he could see clotheslines hanging between apartments.

Jayce breathed in deeply and was startled by the not to gentle nudge of Joanna’s elbow to his stomach. He exhaled loudly.

“Look, look,” she gushed and pointed to the distant shapes of the zeppelins. “It’s already started!” Jayce didn’t need to be told twice to look. His eyes were wide and rapt at the sight of the shimmering beast that was Piltover’s prized zeppelin. His excitement grew when he realized it was heading toward them, silent and steadily.

The moment it did though Jayce had felt time stand still for a long moment. The sound from the world was gone as if the large, consuming shadow of the creature above them had swallowed it whole. The wind pushed at his sides but Jayce stood transfixed, eyes on the dark belly of the beast. He didn’t think he had breathed until it had past and he gasped out in surprise when Joanna poked his arm with the nose of a paper airplane.

It was colored in blue and yellow marker and had a crudely drawn face on one of the wings. He scrunched his nose and squinted at it. “Who’s that?” he asked. Joanna raised a brow and leaned her hip to the side with a load of sass. “It’s you of course. This one is yours.” She pressed it into his long fingers and then pulled out one that was the most offending shade of pink. Jayce squinted even more.

“You’re Piltover; I’m Zaun,” she announced, pointing to Jayce first then herself. Joanna swiped a thumb across her nose proudly and grinned. “We’ll throw these planes here every year and see who wins. Got it?” Jayce blinked then slowly nodded. She laughed and the sun winked at them from between the branches.

He stumbled over to the railing, tripping over the laces that had fallen from his untied sneakers briefly. Joanna stood high, feet tucked between the bars fearlessly. If she had fallen forward it would be the end and Jayce shifted side to side nervously. “C'mon, get up here,” Joanna ordered. Jayce shook his head wearily and held his plane a tad bit tighter. “Nu-uh, I’m quite okay down here.” She rolled her eyes but didn’t try to persuade him.

“Alright, but don’t cry if I win.”

“I’m not going to-”

“1, 2, 10, GO!”

He fumbled with his plane but somehow managed to send it flying about the same time as Joanna did.

In the end, it was Joanna that had won, her’s going the longest and like a foreshadowing, Zaun had won the race yet in Jayce’s heart he felt like Piltover had won. They would definitely win next year. Jayce was going to make sure of that. He’d one day be piloting Piltover’s beast of wind. He could not have foreseen the trials and hardships that would come his way.

To be fair, no one does.  

**Author's Note:**

> I've been developing Jayce's story for a while now and I just wanted to write a series featuring memories from his life. Art in the chapters is drawn by me as well. 
> 
> Jayce's lore always seemed a bit empty to me, but that was also why he drew me in as a character because he was so blank like an empty canvas and I wanted to paint a story for him. 
> 
> Of course it isn't what I think everyone should think of as his story. This is after all my own interpretation and development. Since I wanted to roleplay him, I wanted him to at least have a good story as his background. You can also read it more recent parts on my tumblr for him at jaycetechmaturgics. 
> 
> I hope those who read will enjoy. I'm having a very good time writing stories for him.


End file.
